Jump to content
3DXChat Community

UI Tweaks


SteveJackhammer

Recommended Posts

[I had these on another forum, but I think discussion there is focused on more important "big picture" issues, and my issues are more along the lines tweaks.  The "As a user..." bits will sound familiar to the developers if they use the Agile model for software development.]

Have the name of the location displayed prominently somewhere on the User Interface.  As a user, I want to be able to know where I am without opening the Locations menu and looking for the blue-highlighted entry in the shared worlds list.

 

 

Edited by SteveJackhammer
more info
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Use the chat dialog as a unified alert window.  So as user responses in World, Local, and Private appear and scroll in the chat window, inject other alerts as well.  In particular, things like a friend request or a partner request can put a line in the chat like "System: You just received a partner request from [username]".  As a user, I want to be aware of external events while focusing on a chat, and not miss the opportunity to respond to these events in a timely fashion.

Ideally I can act on the event directly in the window, like a right-click and a context menu with "Accept request" "Reject request" options.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't be quick to close windows when switching rooms.  I might have a profile open, and then I switch to a different room, and the profile window has closed.  It is not clear why that would be closed (unlike the Local chat which ought to be cleared when the room changes).  As a user, I would expect that autonomous UI actions happen only when they are actually necessary, otherwise the UI ought to defer to me on when to manipulate UI elements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with you on everything except having system notifications in the chat window.  Unless you mean a third tab like System.  I find that the chat window often scrolls too quickly for me to keep up with, especially if I have any other personal chats going.  I would prefer to see these notifications appear like other PMs on the side of the chat window so that you will see them just as you do new PMs and can respond to them as you have time rather than the limited seconds given for things like friend requests.
It would be nice to be able to reply to the person making any request as well in case you want to reject but give a reason or conditionally accept if they agree.  Essentially making the request something you can respond to in a PM from the requester.

This is the way I see it working best for me but others may prefer alternate methods.

Absolutely love having the room name shown.  I have this same issue all the time when someone asks me where I am.  It would be nice if the name of the room was able to be copied since sometimes the rooms have names using characters I cannot type on my own keyboard.

A history feature would be nice also.  For instance, say you were in a room and had to leave or mistakenly clicked the icon to go into user editor.  You want to go back to the room you were in but may not remember the name and/or the room changed positions in the list and you have trouble finding it again.  Simply clicking your history and the last room you were in would be so helpful.

Some limited amount of chat history would be beneficial also.
I have lost many messages when the game or my computer crashed.
When I am building I have my chat window closed and may not notice new PMs coming in.  Or I did see them but delayed responding while involved in something else and then lose them if I lose my connection for some reason.  This happens frequently and I know many others that have had the same issue.
It's not like we need a long history of every PM we have had, but the last message from the last few PMs we received would go a long way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another small one.  Buttons with English words in them are a strange choice for a UI that is clearly used world-wide.  Visually pleasing flat-style icons would probably do a lot to freshen up the look and feel of the UI, and also improve the user experience for everyone.

(I should amend this with noting that there are in fact icons beside the word labels, but they are small and crowded out by the words.  Just the icon is fine.  Maybe a floating tooltip with the words you still want words.)

Edited by SteveJackhammer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

agree with most of this. I'll add a suggestion I'd made a couple of weeks ago that dovetails with this thread:

Here's a useful suggestion that should be dead easy to implement.

In Second Life, the profiles include a UI tab called "Notes", where one can type in comments regarding each individual we encounter. These notes are visible only to the user, and are really handy for tracking where we met, mutual friends, birthdays, ingame info, etc.

I've seen peeps on my friends' list here whom I haven't spoken with in months, and often struggle to recall their 'story'. A Notes tab would be so useful.

And as the code already exists for us to edit our profile info, adding a UI tab set to private seems easy-peas to me, from my somewhat limited experience with javascript, C+ etc.

Anyone concur?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That font used in the tab headers is almost illegible for me.  For example, the tabs "World" and "Local" at the top of the chat widget.  It's fine for words I know like "World" and "Local", but when it's a person's name rendered in that font, I can often not make heads or tails of the letters.  Consider switching to the clean sans-serif font used elsewhere in the UI.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Continuing with UI issues to consider.  This isn''t an action game, but it does demand navigation through a virtual space, turning corners, avoiding obstacles, changing facing, and so on.  With that in mind, it has to be said that the button elements are far too small, at least on higher resolution screens, and they are shaped less than optimally.  I'm trying to navigate on the screen, and decide to switch to Run from Walk.  Because there is no keyboard shortcut for this, I need to move my mouse (and so my eyes) to the far side of the screen where the buttons are).  The buttons are a uniform grey, so I can't just aim for a particular splash of colour.  To find the correct button, I have to read words (no icons) and put the mouse point on a small thin rectangular space (not a larger easy-to-hit circle or square).  If I miss, I hit one of the idle or dance buttons, because those thin grey buttons are also jammed up against the Run and Walk buttons with only a small margin between them.  I'm doing all this mouse tracking and positioning far away from where the action is happening, and my character plows into a wall or falls off an edge without me knowing.

Make the buttons larger, symmetric, colour-coded and icon-decorated.  Separate them.  Put Run and Walk at the top center or bottom center so that when my eye goes there, the distance from the core action is much smaller.  Keep those buttons far away from a separate Dance cluster and a different Idle cluster.  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe some new navigation buttons:

* Stop:  Along with Run and Walk.  The Stop button causes the character to stop walking or running immediately.

* Rotate Left / Rotate Right: Clicking it causes the character to change facing by 20 degrees (or 15 or 30, it's negotiable) in the indicated direction.  Great to help line up with other characters, with objects, or even to make the character face the action instead of standing facing a palm tree or a wall.  

 

Bonus Points:  Option to tie the facing to camera direction.  If the user spins the character-centered camera (F6), the avatar turns to match the direction.  Might make everyone look like spinning lunatics on the screen, so the feature might be good for laugh value.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More use of fly-outs.

Consider the clothes button.  Yes, it should be a bigger symmetrical icon and so on and so forth, as I've indicated before. Put that aside.  I like the way the individual clothes on/off buttons fly out from behind when clicked.  Great way to save space.  And those flyout buttons are big symmetrical squares!

1. Apply the same to Take Off All and Put On All.  Right now they are tiny grey buttons.  Make them big square buttons and add them to the main clothing button list (always at the beginning, Take Off on top and Put On below it).  Now all the clothing buttons are the same.

2. Remove all the Dance and Rest Position (idle #, sit #, and so on) buttons and replace with Dance and Rest.  Clicking on Dance causes a menu of Dance buttons to fly out as with the Clothes button.  Likewise Rest causes a flyout of buttons for Idle and Sit and so on.  Simplifies the overall screen, hides buttons from view until they are needed, is intuitive, and so on. 

You could even consider a menu tree approach:

Rest --> Idle --> Idle #1, Idle #2...

Rest --> Sit --> Sit #1, Sit #2...

Dance --> Slow --> Slow 1, Slow 2, Slow 3...

Dance --> Fast --> Fast 1, Fast 2, Fast 3...

Instead of, or in addition to, a menu scheme, you could also decorate the specific Dance buttons (possible now that they are big squares/circles instead of tiny grey squares) with symbols to help with selection.  How about a row of one to three exclamation marks ("!") along the top of the button indicate the relative speed of the dance?  Then you wouldn't really need a menu for that categorization (reserve the menu for some other way to organize dances if it makes sense to).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could we add a search box to the Location list?  I'm often looking for a specific location, typically a friend's room, and all I can do is search up and down the list, squinting at the tiny font, cursing the choice of grey font color for the users name against a slightly different grey background.  A partial text search box would be hugely helpful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll add in a few more (sorry if I duplicated any of these).

  1. The ability to lock your toon movement for profile viewing. (just disables the "click to move" feature") Call it "voyeur" mode to go with the theme if you like.
  2. The ability to break out chat windows so you can see several at a time if you have the screen space.
  3. The ability to move your windows around more, just click and drag them where you want.
  4. Stupid little one - ability to turn on music stream when customizing your room.
  5. Speed Move when customizing a room, something like a 'run' where your camera just moves 10X as fast when you have it on.
  6. Search app, to search for profiles by name, age, location, what they are seeking.  I've seen it in tons of MMORPG's, but this game just screams that it needs a profile search.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...